Olivia lifted her brows delicately. “You’re going to sew for him? Whatever for?”
“He doesn’t have any shirts of his own and we don’t have any here that he can wear.” Althea hoped she sounded brisk and businesslike. In truth, her jaw still tingled where Jeff’s fingers had touched it. She unfurled the chambray down the length of the table. “I have this perfectly good cloth going unused. It’s the least we can do—the man can’t go around without a shirt.”
Olivia stood with her hands resting on the back of her father’s chair at the head of the table. “I suppose not . . . how can he have no shirts? I never heard of a grown person not having clothes.”
Althea regarded her, dressed in sea-green muslin with frothy billows of ruffles edging the hem. Though they both a lived a simple, isolated existence, Olivia had never been denied anything in her life, and from her childlike viewpoint, she couldn’t imagine anyone else’s bad luck or bad choices. “Some people aren’t as fortunate as we are.”
“Because daddy always took good care of us.”
Althea couldn’t respond to that. Yes, though farming wasn’t a wealthy man’s occupation, Amos Ford had given his family a comfortable life. They’d never starved, and he’d kept a roof over their heads and put clothes on their backs. But to Olivia he’d also given his regard and approval. If only there had been something left for his eldest daughter—
“Now it’s our turn to help someone else,” Althea replied, smoothing the fabric with her hands, fabric that would eventually curve around Jeff Hicks’ shoulders.
Olivia watched her for a moment, then turned to leave the room. “I believe I’ll go up to bed. I’ve been feeling weak and tired today.”
Althea, trying to decide the best cutting layout, turned her attention back to the chambray. “Oh? Well, that’s fine, dear. You go on.”
“I hope I feel better tomorrow,” her sister ventured from the doorway.
“I’m sure you will.” Her mind racing with pictures of Jeff, his lips, the heat in his eyes, Althea didn’t look up.
“Oh, I thought you’d like to know—when I looked out my window this afternoon, I noticed quite a few weeds on the graves.”
Althea’s head snapped up, her full attention on Olivia. “Weeds?”
Olivia nodded, making her long silky curls bounce. “They seem to be thriving. And I know how particular you are about tending the graves. Well, goodnight.” She glided away then, her taffeta petticoats rustling against the doorframe as she passed.
~~*~*~*~~
Jeff sat outside the lean-to on an old crate, looking at the velvet night. From the nearby creek he heard the faint sound of croaking frogs, and a lone night bird sent a high-pitched call across the fields.
The moon was just a scrap of silver-white in the black sky, a hint of what it had been in the past and would grow into again. As he watched it, for the first time in many months Jeff found himself wondering about the man he had become.
Over the course of all this time, he’d allowed his feelings—his heart—to die. It was funny how a man’s spirit could wither, yet his body still worked and his legs still walked. But while he’d had nothing else to be proud of, he had actually begun to take pride in the fact that he cared about nothing and no one, not even himself.
Then he’d met Althea Ford and in a matter of days, for no reasons he could understand, his silent, withered heart had begun to beat again. He’d felt anger. He’d felt satisfaction. A few hours earlier, he’d felt desire for a woman.
But most of all, he felt lonely. That was new to him, and he couldn’t say he liked it much. Whiskey was a reasonable cure for a man’s emptiness, and up to now he’d cured it every day.
He still saw Allie as she’d looked, with her tape measure and no-nonsense manner. Beneath that exterior, though, he sensed a softer woman with her own desires and hopes left unfulfilled. When her fingers touched him—lightly, so lightly—he’d hoped she wouldn’t notice the goose bumps she raised on his skin. Or the hard, swift arousal that strained against the front of his jeans. He had been just seconds away from claiming her soft coral mouth with his own.
After she ran back into the house, he’d found his appetite again and wolfed down the cold chicken and potatoes that had been his dinner. He could have eaten a whole coop of chickens, he’d been so hungry.
But Jeff knew that food wasn’t what he really craved.
He turned his gaze to the dark house on his right. The only light came from a window upstairs. He didn’t know if it was Allie’s window, but he knew that whether or not he wanted to think about her face and soft form, they would be in his mind when sleep finally took him.
~~*~*~*~~
Althea lay in her narrow bed, tense and restless. The night was unusually hot and still, and sleep would not come to her. When she closed her eyes she saw Olivia, looking lost and anxious as she’d stood on the porch. Or she envisioned her parents graves’, overrun with weeds, and her father’s stern, dark expression.
But sometimes she saw Jeff Hicks standing in before her without a shirt, long and lean and warm to the touch.
Guilt and yearning tore at her in equal measures.
Don’t let me down again, girl.
Jeff. Allie.
The guilt won out.
There was no Allie and Jeff. She rolled over to her side, dragging the sheet with her and binding her body in its length. She’d hired the man to do some work around the farm and that was all. She had no right to begin daydreaming just because he’d touched her cheek and might have kissed her while she measured him for a shirt. She couldn’t.
Besides, Althea supposed she didn’t deserve any dreams at all. And even if she did, her responsibility to Olivia came before anything else.
Jeff Hicks was not part of her life and he could not be. That was a certainty.
Some women were meant to be wives and mothers. Althea knew that she was meant to be her sister’s companion.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The sun had barely crept over the horizon when Jeff pulled himself out of bed in the lean-to and jammed his arms into his shirt sleeves. The shirt was one of the ones Allie had brought to him, and it fit no better than the first one had. But if she’d meant what she said last night, he’d soon have a new shirt that would be the right size.
He stood in the doorway with his hands braced against the frame. It was a clean, dewy morning, touched with mist. The kind of morning that only May could bring. He hadn’t seen one like this for years. It surprised him to realize how much he’d missed it.
Grabbing his towel and the tin wash basin he used for shaving, he headed off for the trough. His hands were steadier this morning, and so was his stomach. In fact, they seemed to be getting a little better every day. Today he had to start clearing the field for Allie’s garden. Given the tangle of weeds and grass choking it, he knew he had a hell of a job in front of him.
As he crossed the yard he glanced off to his right toward the pair of headstones that marked the graves of Allie’s parents under the limbs of a stately oak. A short, white wrought iron fence surrounded the area, and unlike the rest of the property it was freshly painted. Looking closer, Jeff realized that Allie was kneeling inside the enclosure. With her head lowered that way, the thick braid that fell over her shoulder swung back and forth with her movements, and made him think of a dark garnet caught in a ray of sun.
At first he thought that maybe she was having a personal moment at her parents’ graves. He would respect her privacy and go on about his business. But then he realized she was working at something, and working with a vengeance as if the devil were driving her. Her flushed face was smudged with dirt, and strands of hair straggled around her temples. She wore a faded plum-colored skirt, and her snug-fitting white blouse clung to the roundness of her full breasts. She was not as neat and tidy as usual, but that made her look even more appealing than she had last night.
Jeff stepped up to the short fence and saw Allie clawing at the soil with a pronged weede
r, grim determination creasing her forehead.
“Isn’t that something you’d like me to take care of, Allie?” he asked quietly. It seemed like a fair trade for the shirt she was going to make him.
She jumped, obviously startled, and looked up at him. “Oh, Mr. Hicks— I’m sorry, what did you say?”
Back to “Mr. Hicks.” He stepped inside the fence but kept a respectful distance from the margins of the graves. “I can do this for you. You probably have better things to see after in the house.”
She rose on her knees and clutched the weeder to her breast as if it were a sacred object. “Dear God, no! I mean, thank you, but I have to do this. It’s my responsibility. Besides, I know how he—how I want it.”
Jeff thought he saw fear in Allie’s eyes. He glanced around and it looked as though she’d just gotten started; not much of the dirt had been disturbed. The burying ground, though, was a complete contrast to the rest of the farm. Sure a few weeds had popped up, but he could see that it was well tended. Some kind of small-bloomed flowers—pansies maybe—were planted in neat half-circle beds that had been cut out in front of each granite headstone. The rest of the ground was planted with grass. Tiny daisies dotted its rough green plane.
Amos Ford’s headstone was plain and spare, carved only with the dates of his birth and death. Her mother’s, though, had been engraved with birds and flowers, and a peculiar inscription: Happier in death than in life.
“It looks nice here—your hard work shows,” he said, tucking the basin against his side.
“My father wouldn’t tolerate a weed on his grave or on my mother’s.” She talked as if Amos was still alive, and the fear he saw in her eyes grew when she mentioned him.
Nodding at Lucinda Ford’s marker, he added, “Your mother has been gone a long time.”
Allie turned her weeder back to clawing at some chickweed trying to take root in one of the flower beds. “Yes.”
Jeff sighed. She was all stiff and formal again, and he was sorry that side of her had returned. She had softness in her—he’d seen it.
“I want you to start working on the garden today,” she said, not looking up.
“Yes, ma’am. That’s what I though I’d do.”
“Fine. We don’t have a horse to pull the plow, but old Mr. Smithfield will let us use his mule. You just have to go borrow it and tell him that you’re working for me.”
Jeff rubbed the back of his neck, and suddenly felt awkward. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”
Allie stopped clawing and looked up at him. “Why not? What’s the matter?”
Jeff’s memory didn’t always work very well. The past months had blurred together and run over each other until the passage of time had become nothing but a featureless gray mist. But he still remembered the morning a few months ago when Elisha Smithfield had encountered him asleep in a doorway on a side street in town and called him a lazy, drunken bum. Even if it was partly true, his pride has felt the sting of the old man’s accusation. And Smithfield wasn’t likely to let Jeff borrow anything. “I’m not one of his favorite citizens.”
Allie waved off his thin protest. “Bosh—I’ll give you a note to take to him. Now let me finish here so I can start your breakfast.”
Knowing that he’d been dismissed, Jeff stared at the top of her downturned head for a moment. Then he turned and walked toward the trough.
Suddenly the morning didn’t seem so fine, after all.
~~*~*~*~~
The next seven days amounted to nothing more than backbreaking work for Jeff. Old man Smithfield loaned him his mule but not until he presented Allie’s note. Even then he showed so much reluctance that Jeff wished he could pull the damned plow himself and tell Elisha to keep the braying beast.
The only person he saw come and go was Seth Wickwire, Eli’s son, who brought out the Fords’ grocery order. The farm wasn’t far from town, but it might as well have been at the edge of the earth, as isolated as it was.
Althea continued to keep her distance, never again showing the vulnerable softness he’d seen that one time. The hint of optimism that he’d felt early on in his stay at the Fords’ fizzled out, and his memories leaped forward into his thoughts. At night, he crawled into the bed in the lean-to, stiff and aching from physical labor he wasn’t used to. But sleep eluded him. He lay on the tick, staring at the low ceiling overhead, seeing Wesley’s surprised expression the instant he’d been shot. The scene had worn a deep groove in Jeff’s tired mind. Or he’d remember the letter that Sally had left him as if he had it in his hands once more.
. . . can’t take the loneliness . . .
A drink or two would send those private demons back to their hiding places. After all, Althea had said that she didn’t want him drinking on her property or her time. That didn’t mean he couldn’t go to town at night. The only thing stopping him was the lack of money. He even considered asking her for an advance on his pay but abandoned the idea—she didn’t think much of him as it was. Short of trying to get credit at the Liberal Saloon, or cadging drinks from customers, Jeff could only endure.
One evening he came back to his room to find a gray shirt on his bed. It was neatly folded and crisply ironed, and it had all of its buttons, unlike what he wore now. The inside of its plain band collar and yoke were lined with a gray-checked material that made the work shirt seem very fancy, indeed. He picked it up to feel the new fabric. Lifting it to his face, he pressed his cheek against it and drew a deep, ragged breath over the knot in his throat. He smelled starch and the faint scent he recognized as Allie’s. It was the first new possession he’d had in years and he longed to try it on. But he was afraid to—he’d just get it dirty. He had no idea when something so nice would come to him again. So Jeff pulled open a drawer in the bureau and carefully laid the shirt inside.
Althea, having promised herself that she would stay away from Jeff Hicks, still found a dozen reasons to go to the kitchen window to watch him work. A few times she even ventured outdoors, lured by the spectacle of the tall, powerful man sweating under the June sun as he guided the plow. She’d seen plowing every year of her life, but now it fascinated her—the large, shiny blade that cleaved the soil, making it ready to receive the seed that Jeff would scatter there.
But she was keenly disappointed that he didn’t wear the shirt she’d made for him—it had been one thing she could do for him and yet keep her distance. Obviously, he didn’t like it. All the times she looked for him, she saw him either wearing one of her father’s old shirts, or worse, no shirt at all. Maybe it was because she’d run out of the chambray and had had to use a piece of gray gingham to finish the inside. Granted, it wasn’t perfect but the gingham couldn’t be seen. It seemed to her that a man with no other decent shirt wouldn’t be so choosy about linings that didn’t show. And her pride wouldn’t let her ask him about it.
Finally, late one morning the earth was ready, and Althea knew that a moment she had worried about was upon her. While Olivia played “In the Gloaming” on the piano, Althea pushed open the back screen door and went down the steps in search of Jeff. In one hand she clutched a list and a ten-dollar gold piece. In the other she carried a pie tin of lard mixed with raisins and sunflower seeds.
The rich smell of turned dirt reached Althea’s nose before the field came into view. It was a smell that was rooted in her earliest memories, before Olivia was born, before her mother’s real strangeness began. It meant spring and new beginnings, although in this case, summer was almost upon them.
Althea scanned the yard and the fields for Jeff, and finally saw him at the end of the fence, driving a nail into a loose picket. Even though he wore one of those old, ill-fitting shirts she’d given him, he looked better than he had any day since he arrived. Hours under the sun had put blond streaks in his hair, and three big meals a day had taken the gaunt look from his face. He swung the hammer with sure, powerful strokes that landed squarely on the nailhead.
He glanced up as she approached and
gave her a hesitant smile. “I noticed a couple of these were loose.” He nodded at the pie plate in her hand. “I hope that isn’t for me.”
Allie glanced at the beef fat and almost laughed. “Oh—my, no. I put this out for the birds. I suppose I spoil them, feeding them at this time of year—they really don’t need my help now. But they’re pretty little things, giving pleasure to the world. I like to give them a treat in return.”
Jeff studied her with a look that for the briefest instant, reflected such tenderness, her breath caught in her chest. She had to turn her eyes from his. “They’re lucky,” he said finally.
Unraveling like an old sweater, she tried to stick to her purpose. “Yes, well—I’ve made up a list of the seeds we need to plant.” She handed the paper to him. “Just the usual vegetables—corn, potatoes, green beans, squash and so on. You can find everything at the feed store.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I know. I used to buy from there too.”
“You did?”
“Sure. I didn’t want to be the sheriff of Decker Prairie forever. I planned to quit eventually and farm full time. I had a couple dozen head of cattle, a few acres planted, a house that I’d built—”
Allie stared at him open-mouthed. “I didn’t know that! I guess I thought—well, I suppose I never gave it any thought at all. Didn’t you live in town?”
He shook his head. “The home place was just about a mile southeast of town. Close enough to do my job, but out far enough to have some breathing room and quiet.” He closed his eyes for a second and smiled, as if to himself. “I loved the quiet.”
Althea knew she shouldn’t ask, but she couldn’t help herself. “What happened to it?”
“It’s still there. Land never goes away.”
“No, but . . . who owns it now?”
“I do.”
“Then why don’t you live there? It would certainly be better than sleeping in a different place every night.” The comment was out before she realized how rude it sounded.
A shadow of pain crossed his face. “The house is gone. Allie, did you want to talk about this list?”
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